This invention relates to an image processing system commonly used by a plurality of personal computers by using a digital copying machine as a scanner device in a local area network on which the personal computers and digital copying machine are connected via a file server, for example.
In recent years, paper documents still play an important role in offices in which the service using documents formed in an electronic data form is generalized with the development of large-capacity memory devices and network and the necessity of efficiently taking information recorded on paper into the electronic data-form environment is increased according to the user environment dealing with electronic data-form information.
In an application field of the conventional scanner device, the scanner device is installed and exclusively used for a specified user or machine and deals with an independent document each time an image of the document is required to be read. Thus, the necessity for reading or fetching the image is generalized, requests for reading a large number of documents by a plurality of users are increased and an idea of commonly using a scanner device with high speed and highly intelligent function by a plurality of users is widely spread to make the image reading operation efficient.
Under this condition, in order to reduce occupied time of the scanner device commonly used, an attempt is made to previously allot an image reading function to the operation button of the scanner device and omit the setting operation for the scanner device which will be effected by the user at the time of image reading, or provide a common file server for temporarily storing a read image and set a directory of storage destination of the previously fetched image on the file server to the operation button of the scanner device so that the process for confirming or modifying the read or fetched image can be effected in a place separated from the scanner device.
A plurality of operation buttons are prepared in the scanner device or digital copying machine according to a condition in which the scanner is commonly used by a plurality of users and the improvement is made according to the common-usage environment in which the individual user can allot the function used by himself to the operation button.
For the common scanner, it is an important subject to acquire the security for a read or fetched image, and in the conventional case (Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 9-205513), users who can utilize buttons for the respective operation buttons and authorities for access to the fetched image are previously set to the operation buttons by separately providing a server for effecting the user management.
By setting the various contents to the operation buttons of the scanner device, the degree of freedom of the user setting is greatly increased, but the processing contents for the operation buttons and the setting operation of the access authority become complicated because of the high degree of freedom and there occurs a problem that the simplicity of utilization of the scanner device is lost.